Is 'Dallas' TV show taking orders from Obama?

Garth Kant is WND Washington news editor. Previously, he spent five years writing, copy-editing and producing at "CNN Headline News," three years writing, copy-editing and training writers at MSNBC, and also served several local TV newsrooms as producer, executive producer and assistant news director. His most recent book is "Capitol Crime: Washington's cover-up of the Killing of Miriam Carey." He also is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, "How to Write Television News."

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration may be strategically writing its agenda into your favorite television shows.

Most of America already knew the administration has been lobbying television and film writers to promote Obamacare.

President Obama’s top adviser, Valerie Jarrett, arguably the most powerful woman in America, candidly acknowledged last week why she was in Hollywood.

WND posted video last week of Jarrett saying during an interview, “That’s part of why I’m in L.A. I’m meeting with writers of various TV shows and movies to try to get it (Obamacare) into the scripts.”

Jarrett described that move as perfectly innocent, like something a concerned mother would do for her child.

“We try to take care of our children. Even when they’re grown. And what we want to do here is, like, nag. We’re really good at nagging. I’m a mom, so I know. I’m a really good nag. And I can come at the same issue like 20 different ways until my daughter goes, ‘OK, I’m cool, I’ll just do it.'”

Now there’s reason to wonder just how many of its policies the Obama administration may have been “nagging” Hollywood to promote.

That’s because the similarities between a recent television episode and one of the latest moves by the administration may be too uncanny to be mere coincidence.

The March 10 episode of TNT’s “Dallas” featured a plot in which the main character, Bobby Ewing, conspires with the Sierra Club to highlight the purported plight of the lesser prairie chicken to stop fracking on the Southfork Ranch.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., told Fox News the Obama administration is threatening energy production as well as the property rights of farmers and ranchers.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said, “Including the lesser prairie chicken on the endangered species list will diminish private land owners’ control over their own property and threaten agriculture and energy jobs. Conservation does not have to come at the expense of property rights, growth and opportunity.”

Fellow Texan Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, had a similar response, saying, “Today’s decision, which has real-world consequences for Texas families, landowners and businesses, is a missed opportunity to acknowledge Texans’ unprecedented conservation efforts. I will continue to fight to reform this process so job creators and local officials have a say.”

Fracking, in fact, is making a huge difference in advancing America’s energy independence. A report from Bloomberg only weeks ago said during one week in December, the U.S. pumped 8.075 million barrels a day – the most since 1988.

U.S. production was up 18 percent in 12 months, the report said, pushed largely by advances in hydraulic fracturing and other technologies in North Dakota and Texas. Production in each of those states was up 21 percent.

It put energy independence within sight, as experts said the U.S. met approximately 86 percent of all of its own needs for the first eight months of 2013.

A 10-member group of oil and gas representatives, including lobbying giant The American Petroleum Institute, called the industries’ effect on lesser prairie chickens “poorly understood but likely to be negligible.”

“Adding another layer of regulation on the oil and gas industry in a region that is key to America’s energy future and for which there is no clear environmental benefit runs counter to this administration’s stated approach to energy and regulation,” the group said.

However, it could have been worse for the industries.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the lesser prairie chicken as threatened rather than endangered.

Still, according to the service, that means the species is “likely to become in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future and is a step below ‘endangered.'”